AlmaLinux KDE Custom Live Media

This git repository contains the scripts needed to produce a customized AlmaLinux KDE Live ISO. A fully-functioning AlmaLinux system is required, being it metal or virtual.

THIS UNOFFICIAL PROJECT IS NOT ENDORSED BY the AlmaLinux OS Foundation. IT IS A DERIVATIVE WORK USING MODIFIED SCRIPTS ORIGINALLY AND OFFICIALLY PUBLISHED ON AlmaLinux/sig-livemedia.

1. How to build it

This project contains the KickStart file required to build KDE live media for AlmaLinux 9.3, and modified templates that are required in order to use kernel-lt from ELRepo, which is 6.1, better supporting more recent hardware than the official 5.14 one. I specifically needed a newer kernel for an Acer laptop that uses MT7663 for Wi-Fi and BT.

IMPORTANT! As provided and signed by ELRepo, kernel-lt cannot be used on UEFI systems with Secure Boot enabled! (Quote: These packages are not signed for SecureBoot.) Make sure you disable Secure Boot in the BIOS/UEFI.

Because I couldn't find out how to tell livecd-tools to use a different kernel than the standard one, I had to use livemedia-creator, hence lorax, despite this one being unable to use package caching (blame anaconda for that).

Use this to install the prerequisites required to build this project:

sudo dnf -y install epel-release
sudo dnf -y --enablerepo="epel" install anaconda-tui \
                livecd-tools \
                lorax \
                subscription-manager \
                pykickstart \
                efibootmgr \
                efi-filesystem \
                efi-srpm-macros \
                efivar-libs \
                grub2-efi-*64 \
                grub2-efi-*64-cdboot \
                grub2-tools-efi \
                shim-*64

2. Building using lorax

To use kernel-lt and (its modules) instead of kernel (and its modules), lorax needs to use a modified script. It's quite unorthodox to modify a file that would be overriden by the next update of the lorax package, but I found it much easier this way.

So, before anything else, use the provided patch this way:

sudo patch /usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pylorax/treebuilder.py -p0 < treebuilder.patch

This is a brute way of telling lorax to ignore any kernels with versions lower than 6.1 (the normal EL9 kernel is 5.14) for the kernels used by the LiveISO to boot; once in the live session, you can have as many kernels as there are added as packages, they show up in GRUB, and they will all (i.e. both) installed (if you'll want to install the OS), but the kernel used to boot this ISO is just one.

 #  Only allow kernel-lt or kernel-ml from ELRepo in the case of EL9
            if kernel.version >= "6.1":
            	kernels.append(kernel)

See more in section 4.

Then, and only then, run this to build the KDE ISO:

sudo livemedia-creator \
    --ks=kickstarts/almalinux-9-live-kde-lt.ks \
    --no-virt --resultdir  ./iso-kde \
    --project "AlmaLinux Live" \
    --make-iso \
    --iso-only \
    --iso-name AlmaLinux-9.3-x86_64-Live-KDE-Ludditus.iso \
    --releasever 9.3 \
    --volid "AlmaLinux-9_3-x86_64-Live-KDE-LT" \
    --nomacboot 

3. Changes towards the original scripts from AlmaLinux/sig-livemedia

• The Live media will boot using kernel-lt from ELRepo. The installed system will have both kernel-lt (6.1) and kernel (5.14), so pay attention to those situations when updating the system only brings a new kernel, which would go first in GRUB, before kernel-lt. But you should know that if you ever used several kernel branches simultaneously (Arch, EndeavourOS, Manjaro, anyone?).
• I'm using timezone Europe/Berlin and ftp.gwdg.de for most repos in the ks file. You can change them to match your needs. Consult mirrors.almalinux.org if needed; also, elrepo.org.
• I have used this script to build a KDE Live ISO of AlmaLinux 9.3 before the team could build an official ISO, because I needed it for a new install, and without the requirement of a USB Ethernet adapter + a patch cord for the said laptop, so I couldn't be stopped by the situation that prevented them from offering an official KDE ISO: when EPEL9 has updated KDE to Plasma 5.27.6, KF5 5.108, Apps 23.04.3, kdepim-addons couldn't be updated because kf5itinerary needed a newer poplar than the one available in EL9 (read about it here). I'm not using KDE PIM at all, so I just excluded kdepim-addons.
• Extra repositories have been added and enabled, with the packages shown below preselected: almalinux-synergy: for dnfdragora (yay!) rpmfusion-free-updates and rpmfusion-nonfree-updates: for the proper, unhindered versions of ffmpeg, gstreamer1-plugins-ugly, libavcodec-freeworld, lame, mplayer, smplayer, vlc.
• Additional software that will be preinstalled: alsa-sof-firmware (newer laptops need it, but most distros don't install it), featherpad (because it's a small gem), fortune-mod (because you should add it to ~/.bashrc), krename, mc, neofetch, warpinator.

4. What I don't like in these building systems

IMVHO, both livecd-tools and livemedia-creator (lorax) suck big time. Their creators never thought that some people might want to customize the boot kernel, to include more than one kernel, etc. They "knew better" (à la Microsoft), and this area is the least configurable in these open-source projects!

The resulting ISO files suffer from the following inconsistency:

• The booting kernel is in isolinux/vmlinuz and it cannot be customized. The only options are (1) 'Start AlmaLinux Live 9.3' and (2) 'Test this media & start AlmaLinux Live 9.3'. It's impossible to use a second kernel. livecd-tools will use the kernel package, no matter what; livemedia-creator can be customized, but far too many templates are used in the process (well, it comes from RH, right?).
• Once you have booted into LiveOS/squashfs.img, the live system will include whatever has been installed there, in this case both kernel and kernel-lt, properly listed in grub2.cfg, and installable by Anaconda.

Nobody, and by this I mean the designers of such pieces of software, ever thought of any of these options:

• Let the user specify the kernel they want to use for isolinux/vmlinuz.
• F-ing use a proper GRUB configuration and make it able to boot all the kernels that are included in the installed live system LiveOS/squashfs.img.
• Alternatively, and regardless of what's in the squash, include all the kernels that have "Provide: kernel", even if that would mean to include all the kernels available in all the enabled repos; in this case, kernel-ml would be a 3rd kernel, which would be an interesting way to test a live system without installing anything.

Hardcoding shit is shitty.

The barbaric way I needed to patch /usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pylorax/treebuilder.py was the simplest way to avoid this idiocy by design that will become obvious once you read this log excerpt:

INFO pylorax.ltmpl: running x86.tmpl
...
DEBUG pylorax.ltmpl: template line 4: mkdir isolinux
...
DEBUG pylorax.ltmpl: template line 19: mkdir images/pxeboot
DEBUG pylorax.ltmpl: template line 20: installkernel images-x86_64 boot/vmlinuz-5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3.x86_64 images/pxeboot/vmlinuz
DEBUG pylorax.ltmpl: template line 21: installinitrd images-x86_64 boot/initramfs-5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3.x86_64.img images/pxeboot/initrd.img
DEBUG pylorax.ltmpl: template line 22: installkernel images-x86_64 boot/vmlinuz-6.1.62-1.el9.elrepo.x86_64 images/pxeboot/vmlinuz
DEBUG pylorax.ltmpl: template line 23: installinitrd images-x86_64 boot/initramfs-6.1.62-1.el9.elrepo.x86_64.img images/pxeboot/initrd.img
DEBUG pylorax.ltmpl: template line 24: hardlink images/pxeboot/vmlinuz isolinux
DEBUG pylorax.ltmpl: template line 25: hardlink images/pxeboot/initrd.img isolinux

The template lines are counted by an unknown logic. All four x86.tmpl files (because they're four, and the log doesn't specify which one was used!) have the lines labeled 20-ish into the 50-ish range, and they just install all the found kernels, with the last one overriding the previous kernel!

## install kernels
mkdir ${KERNELDIR}
%for kernel in kernels:
    %if kernel.flavor:
        ## i386 PAE
        installkernel images-xen ${kernel.path} ${KERNELDIR}/vmlinuz-${kernel.flavor}
        installinitrd images-xen ${kernel.initrd.path} ${KERNELDIR}/initrd-${kernel.flavor}.img
    %else:
        ## normal i386, x86_64
        installkernel images-${basearch} ${kernel.path} ${KERNELDIR}/vmlinuz
        installinitrd images-${basearch} ${kernel.initrd.path} ${KERNELDIR}/initrd.img
    %endif
%endfor

hardlink ${KERNELDIR}/vmlinuz ${BOOTDIR}
hardlink ${KERNELDIR}/initrd.img ${BOOTDIR}
%if basearch == 'x86_64':
    treeinfo images-xen kernel ${KERNELDIR}/vmlinuz
    treeinfo images-xen initrd ${KERNELDIR}/initrd.img
%endif

It's sheer luck that the 6.1 kernel replaced 5.14 this time, and not the other way around! As a matter of fact, every second build I made has the livemedia.log kernel lines reversed, so only one build in two boots the 6.1 kernel, and the other half of the builds boot the 5.14 kernel! This is why I needed to patch treebuilder.py, so only the kernel-lt kernel would be considered!

Either way, at least this fortunate thing is possible with livemedia-creator; when I tried using livecd-tools (which is faster, because it caches all the RPMs), the booting kernel was the first one, i.e. 5.14, and there was nothing I could do about it.

If this is the quality of open-source code, I don't want to know how the closed-source one looks like...

Note that Anaconda will install both kernels on the final system, with the default kernel being 6.1, but the second and the rescue kernel being 5.14. (As a side note, I'm stunned how so many people are getting mental over the complexity of systemd, but there isn't that much of an outrage about the sheer abomination that is GRUB2. Not only it's absurdly complex, but even the paths are changing back and forth, as I could notice in FC36, to which I submitted a bug for grub-customizer with its solution; now grub-customizer works again in Fedora, but it doesn't work in EPEL9!)

5. Download a prebuilt ISO

I hosted an ISO file on SourceForge, under almalinux-custom-kde-live - in 9.3. Use it at your own risk! No warranties, explicit or implied. None whatsoever.